Elysian Fields
by Scarlet Down
Summary: Some children pull the wings off flies. Elyse Tailor used to pull the wings off pidgeons. But now she's rising, looking higher than pets ... and is there a place is the Rogues Gallery for one small messed-up round-the-bend nineteen-year-old girl?
1. Chapter 1

_AN: Elyse wasn't meant to turn out like this in the first chapter … but she decided that being a little darling and then turning evil and insane was boring and that she'd much rather just start off torturing things right from the beginning. Please forgive me._

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><p><strong>Chapter 1<strong>

_I know a little girl,  
><em>_She is very dear to me,  
><em>_She is just as sweet as honey  
><em>_When she chooses so to be,_

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><p>Elyse Tailor was weird. Everyone said so. There was something slight … off about her, as if something had gone wrong in her brain when she was little girl and it had never been fixed. Her eyes, which were as black as Batman's cowl, were always either completely blank or fiercely malicious. But somehow her parents and her boss never seemed to notice a thing. It was most disconcerting.<p>

Elyse Tailor was not as pretty as most nineteen year old girls. She was tiny, skinny as a rake and there was something very _pointy_ about her. But she was smart; she was very _very_ smart. And so, around her family and at her work place, she acted like the perfect angel, obeying every instruction to the letter. But when left on her own … she was malevolent to the extreme, going out of her way to kick puppies and steal candy from babies. Actually, she'd never kicked a puppy or stolen a piece of candy from a baby in her life - but the concept is the same.

When she was eight, Elyse began taking road kill home and dissecting it in her back garden - she knew that doing this in her room would result in her mother finding out straight away and putting Elyse into therapy until she had a daughter of her own. Which would be an unlikely occurrence as Elyse knew she would make an absolutely dreadful mother and, more to the point, children would get in the way of her plans. Besides, it would take a miracle to find a man who would ask her out after watching the creepy smile that would spread across her face every time someone new talked to her. It always looked as though she was imagining what they'd look like in a shroud.**1.**

When she was ten, Elyse had the bright idea of putting all the bugs she could find into one big jar and then spending the rest of the day watching them eat each other. She liked the way spiders moved and she had giggled as the ants ran frantically around the glass bottom. She would have had the idea sooner but she was too interested in pheasant guts.

When she was twelve, Elyse got bored of creatures that had been killed by cars or bugs and began killing things herself. Her first victim was Mrs. Next-Door's dog which she threw stones at until it become too weak to fight back ... and then she approached it with a large rock and bashed its brains out. Elyse didn't like dogs at all. She quite liked cats - which tells you far more about her than any amount of descriptions about her love for torment will.

By the time she was fourteen, she was completely isolated. Elyse had never had any friends but now the other schoolchildren were going out of their way to avoid her. Considering that she attended a school in Gotham, this was a fairly large achievement.

When she was sixteen, Elyse got a small part-time job in a rather badly-run restaurant. Despite creeping out the other employees, Elyse was the paradigm of hard-work and her boss adored her. When her wages came through - and it wasn't that much - Elyse put every cent she earned into a small tin box which had a slot for the coins but no way of getting them out. She was saving up for something _very_ special … although she wasn't sure what. Not yet.

When she was eighteen, Elyse moved out of her parents house and found a flat of her own. To be more accurate, she found two rooms of her own, a bathroom and living room - she slept on the couch. It wasn't very comfortable but it meant she had her privacy. She didn't get at all homesick and it didn't give her a nice proud feeling because she was becoming more independent. Elyse had always been _extremely_ independent and it was practically impossible for her to be more so. Her parents had always got the feeling that they weren't feeding her because she was their daughter ... and that instead they were feeding her because _she wanted them too_. No wonder Elyse liked cats.

She had taken her collection of little tin cans with her. She had started a new one every time the last one was filled up and now she had over a dozen. She had acquired a much better-paying job and, now that she had a rent to pay, was only putting half of her wages into the can.

And now she was nineteen. Elyse wasn't entirely sure where her life was going but one thing she knew was that, when she got there, it was going to be exceedingly interesting.

And she was right.

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><p><strong>1. <strong>This wasn't true. She was imagining what they'd look like blown up, or with a dagger through their chest, or with a bullet impeded in their brain. Shrouds were _boring_.

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><p><em>AN: I'm not too sure about how this turned out - thoughts please? And I'm not too sure about where this is going so any suggestions or requests would be very much appreciated. Thank you for taking the time to read a poor English girl's first attempt at decent fan fiction!<em>

_And, oh yes, Elyse is going to be a Rogue. Eventually._


	2. Chapter 2

_ I know it's not very long ... but I just wanted to give you a little more background information on Elyse._

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><p><strong>Chapter 2<strong>

_And her name begins with E, and ends with E._

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><p>Elyse was a good waitress. She could smile and serve and take orders like she was born for it. If you saw her while she was working then you couldn't be blamed for assuming she was a nice happy <em>normal<em> girl. When she smiled like _that_ she was almost pretty. **1**.

She wasn't altogether fond of her job. In fact, she hated it. It was _boring_ and the people who came in there had so little imagination that when she gave them a glass of water the only they would do with it would be to drink it. It would be depressing if Elyse was the type to become depressed by such things. She wasn't. She was the type to kidnap them, force them to think of some incredibly creative way of getting free before finally killing them in an incredibly gruesome manner. But if she _was_ the type to get depressed then she would be very depressed indeed.

But she liked serving children. **2**. She liked treating them as if they were adults - how other people treated adults, that is, rather than how she normally treated adults - just so that they got that feeling of being so _important_. Elyse wanted children to feel important. Because maybe, one day, if a child had the confidence, she would find someone just like herself to talk to. Elyse wasn't at all lonely but sometimes she thought it'd be nice if she could talk to somebody. It got boring when the only people who understood you were dead or in books.

And, besides, Elyse wanted somebody to tell things to. Things like you have to cut through quite a lot of skin on a dead dog before anything fell out and that if you cut a living worm in half then both bits will keep squirming and will probably live for a while or at least until the spider eats them. Interesting things.

The children she liked best were the ones who came in with their nose stuck in a book or who stared straight at her without blinking at all when she gave them their meal. The odd ones, the ones who didn't quite fit in. Reading meant that they were at least a little smarter than the average brat, staring meant that they were either trying to creep her out or find out more about her. They wanted to frighten her or to get more information. She liked the children who stared.

She didn't like the ones who were rude to her. No matter how creepy Elyse was, she always made sure she was exquisitely well-mannered. Somehow, this helped her creepiness along a bit. Nothing makes someone fret more than a teenage girl who is courteous to the extreme.

Adults were a different matter entirely. Elyse was, of course, gracious and helpful to them … but, when she looked at them, her eyes went blank. Completely and utterly blank. It was _weird_, most people's eyes show at least a _little_ emotion when talking to somebody - but not Elyse. _Blank_.

The other members of the workforce avoided her. They didn't like to go near the tables she'd served, perhaps thinking they'd get contaminated, perhaps thinking she would like them to encroach on what they had labelled as 'her territory'. Whatever the reason, they stayed away from where she'd been. And Elyse stayed away from them, thinking them all mindless drones, completely incapable of anything other than being horrifically _normal_.

For Elyse, normal was the very worst thing to be.

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><p><strong>1.<strong> When she smiled her creepy smile she was almost mind-bogglingly terrifying.

**2.** With ketchup. **3.**

**3. **Sorry, sorry, I couldn't resist.

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><p><em>AN: Thought? Suggestions? Ideas? Requests for any villains you particularly want to see?<em>


	3. Chapter 3

_A.N: A new chapter! Oh, wondrous fair!_

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><p><strong>Chapter 3<strong>

_She has brown hair with curls,  
><em>_And black eyes for to see  
><em>_With teeth like tiny pearls,  
><em>_And dimples, one, two, three,_

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><p>Elyse was intrigued. This was a good thing for her, as boredom was her second most hated thing in the world <strong>1.<strong>, but bad for the girl who intrigued Elyse. It is best to attempt to avoid Elyse completely or, if that option is unavailable, to make sure that she does not become at all fascinated with you. But this girl was interesting.

She was exceptionally pretty, with long blonde hair and a sweet smile, but that wasn't what drew Elyse's attention to her. No, it was her eyes that were remarkable. The girl's eyes were blue and sparkling and, like everything else about the girl, revoltingly perfect. But that wasn't what concerned Elyse. The girl's eyes were _blank_. Beautifully, wonderfully, marvellously blank. Not blank like Elyse's were whenever she was pretending to be a nice girl - but blank like a doll's, like two fragments of shining sapphire glass had been pressed into the girl's eye-sockets. **2.**

And there the girl sat, nauseatingly flawless, acting as if she was completely unaware of all the admiring glances and jealous stares she was attracting. Oh, how Elyse longed to mar that unspoilt face - but first she would find out how the girl made her eyes look like that. It couldn't be that she was blind because the girl had looked around when she had walked into the restaurant and she was now reading the menu. Elyse hissed menacingly under her breath and, putting on a cheerful smile, stalked towards the girl's table.

"Hello," she said, her tone unflinchingly bright, "My name is Elyse, may I take you order?"

The girl smiled that repulsively adorable smile and replied, in a voice as unbearably exquisite as an angel's, "Oh, hello! I'd like the chicken soup and a glass of water, please, Elyse."

Elyse crowed triumphantly inside her head. The girl wanted to soup and it was one of the restaurant's many policies to spell out the customer's name in the cream of the soup. It was the ideal opportunity to find out the girl's name and then… "Oh, really?" Elyse endeavoured to sound casually professional, "The soup is delicious, I hear. What is your name, if you don't mind me asking?"

The girl smiled again and Elyse had to resist the urge to pull out every one of the girl's teeth. That would be rude. "It's perfectly fine - I'm Rose Hayden."

It was better than she had hoped, Elyse had a surname now, it would be _so_ much easier to find this _Rose_ again. And, of course, no-one would wonder all that much if the girl went missing, she really was disgustingly lovely.

Elyse briefly speculated whether she was a going a bit far just for a trick some girl could do with her eyes. But she so desperately wanted to know the _why_ and the _how_ of it … and, looking like that, the girl was just _begging_ to be disfigured or at least ruined a little.

Elyse smiled merrily at the girl's answer and walked into the back-kitchen, determined to know how a girl so obviously idiotic could know how to make her eyes so brilliantly blank.

And she completely failed to think of possibility that girl might not know precisely how she did it.

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><p><strong>1.<strong> The top most hated thing was bad manners.

**2.** Elyse briefly toyed with the idea of stabbing someone's eyes out with a shard of glass but discarded the idea on the grounds that then they wouldn't be able to see what she was doing to the rest of them.

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><p><em>A.N: And so, Rose is introduced. You can discover a little more about her in my companion to <em>Elysian Fields_, which is called_ Roses are Red_. As always thoughts, ideas, suggestions and requests are all appreciated so much. To those who have contributed, _so _many thanks go out to you._


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